Marina's Bloggariffic

To make a long story short, my eyes felt irritated last weekend and there was a white spot that formed in my cornea.

A visit to the ophthalmologist says that it was a Corneal Abscess and that it was probably my contact lenses that was giving me problems. I was given 5 different types of medication. 3 of them were eyedrops that I had to use every waking hour.

It was rather fastidious. One of them in particular, gave me a strange bitter taste in my tongue when I drop it in my eye. It was so unpleasant that even nutella tasted bitter. And I’m increasingly photophobic with the medication.

In the end, the Lab Analysis came back and reported that there wasn’t anything wrong with my contact lenses. But they threw them away anyways.

And now I’m wearing an eye bandage. All I need now to complete the look is a parrot.

There is a festive mood all around. Everywhere you go, there would be little symbols to show that a holiday was coming such as after my aerobics, I heard people wishing each other, “auguri”.

Shot with Samsung Innov8

In supermarkets there will be huge crates of really big chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnies and there were throngs of people rushing to buy chocolate eggs.

Cart and I got the chocolate eggs that our niece and nephew wanted as well as cute little chocolate bunnies for ourselves.

I didnt have the heart to eat these cute bunnies.

The next morning, we got ready to go to Cart’s sister’s house. I passed my chocolate bunnies to the kids and was pleasantly surprised to get a chocolate egg of my own!

I dont have the heart to eat this one either

I was a little amused to see the kids smashing the chocolate eggs excitedly to find the ‘sorpresa’ inside. One of them was this superman toy (with an impaired hearing bunny)

We were joined with Cart’s parents for an easter morning meal together.

And we had a relaxing day, watching the kid’s antics, chatting with each other. I felt very comfortable that I was getting better at speaking Italian. Its not perfect, but its a starting step.

Just change ‘Auguri’ to ‘Selamat Hari Raya’ and the chocolate eggs to ketupat and of course with the family meal together, it feels somewhat like Hari Raya.

Now I’m totally excited to make a hari raya celebrations and invite my in-laws in September. And totally wear a baju kurong even if Cart refuses to wear it 😛

Sidenote : Razor burn = pain

Recently, Cart help me to register for fitness classes at a sports centre that was near our home. The place wasn’t anything special. It looked extremely dated but I was really excited as I was raring to start exercising again after a hiatus of about 3 months since the madness of the wedding last year.

The next day, I went there alone. I started to ask the lady at the counter in faltering Italian, “Excuse me, where is this?” while pointing to the registration paper.

And she replied, “Prima Piano, e poi sinistra“.

I understood that she said it was first floor and then to turn to the left. So I thanked her and continued walking on the ground floor where eventually, I saw a class full of little girls doing ballet.

Ah, this could be the place! It was almost time for my exercise class. Surely the ballet class will end soon. But when 10 minutes passed and no one left, I knew something was wrong. So I called Cart up on the phone and asked him what was going on?

He asked me to pass the phone to the lady at the counter and at length told me to go one staircase up where I finally found the right room.

In Singapore, first floor would be considered as ground floor and the next level would be 2 and 3 consecutively.

While in Italy, the ground floor is considered as level 0 while the next would be 1 and 2 consecutively.

No wonder I was lost! Just five minutes in the building, and I got confused. For sure, I would never make it through the Amazing race.

During my first few weeks in Italy, I was extremely homesick. It was a whole new world here – different culture, different people, different language. I felt really lonely. I really miss my family and friends back in Singapore.

My world was like a diablo map.

You know, when you start out, your map is all black and uncovers when you start exploring.

Hence, I tried to find a way to connect.

The easiest way that I could think of was by searching on the internet, looking for the different events that might spark my interest like how it was in Singapore – on sites like www.sg, ping.sg and tomorrow.sg.

Unfortunately, trying to do the same thing here wasn’t so easy. A quick search in google for ‘events in Rome’ would only lead me to mainly touristy places to see or even worse, the website has not been updated since March 2008!

I remembered my friend Clare who is living overseas herself telling me about Elaine, a lady that she knows in Italy and urged me to email to her. And from that point onwards, I started to network with a small amount of people living in Italy. This was very impressive to me at how close knitted they are – Singaporean women living overseas. And fortunately for me, a number of them had facebook accounts.

That was when I decided to start the group ‘Singaporeans in Italy’ on facebook. It is a small group but it was heartening to see them posting on the wall, interacting with each other. And that was when the Rome gang decided to meet up.

Our first meet was in this restaurant called Thai Inn which was owned by a Malaysian. There, I met Lynn, who has been staying in Rome for the past two years as well as Xiangwen who arrived in Rome about the same time as I did.

It was really lovely to hear some Singaporean accents.

We talked almost everything under the sun like, how we’ve been adapting so far, random daily misadventures, as well as talking about our lives back in Singapore.

I really felt at ease. It was fantastic to finally be able to communicate normally as opposed to being stunned trying to talk in Italian.

We met again recently in Garbatella at an Egyptian Restaurant. It was such a delightful evening.

We might not be such a large crowd, but it was more meaningful and intimate to me, having heart to heart discussions and having a laugh together. Probably a good step to ease in, in a country so far away from home.

My Diablo map isn’t complete, but its still a good start 🙂

Links :

• Singaporeans in Italy Facebook Group

P.S : Don’t you think that these spoons that Lynn made is absolutely pretty?

Or rather, happy belated woman’s day to all 🙂

8th of March is the International Woman’s day as well as the equivalence of Festa della Donna in Italy. Its been said to be conceived from an event in New York, when women garment workers held a strike over working conditions.

In all honesty, I haven’t been all that aware of women’s day since it wasn’t given such a big emphasis when I was in Singapore. But here in Italy, there is a culture here where men are supposed to give women – wives, girlfriends, daughters, female friends a yellow mimosa.

Unlike the pink mimosa flowers, with the shy leaves that I was accustomed to, the mimosa here is yellow and they grow in trees. It grows quite abundantly here even – thus I was quite surprised to see florists and street vendors selling them.

And when I retold this to Cartcart, he asked me if I was hinting to him to buy some mimosa 😛 But to buy it makes the entire intent seem a little commercialised, so I said no.

It was when Cart tells me that sometimes even women give mimosas to other women. And that made me quite excited to experience female camaraderie. Finally a chance to bond across diversities! I dressed up prettily and together we drove off to Gianicolo.

It was then when I noticed the spectacular sunset. Roman skies are really pretty, to the point of being unreal – like paintings. When we reached Gianicolo, this was what greeted us.

Unfortunately for me, there was no women around distributing mimosas and messages of strength and unity. In fact, I didn’t even see any women carrying mimosas!

Oh well, too bad. All is not lost though 🙂

So what did you do on women’s day? 🙂

Sidenote : I started jogging again. But the first time I did that, so much cold air went into my lungs and my throat felt extremely dry and painful. At the end, I felt like I was breathing through a straw. It was horrible.

Now I make sure I jog with a woolly scarf on.